This is an early excerpt from my forthcoming book on writing: The Fire of Creation I recently re-read the amazing book “Daily Rituals: How Artists Work” and it got me thinking about what master writers do differently than everyone else. What does it take...

Sometimes being a writer can ruin stories for you because you can see endings coming a mile away. Unfortunately, I sometimes forget this is not the case for my friends and I totally killed the Breaking Bad ending for a few folks by predicting every beat. Some people...

One mistake will kill a story faster than any other: not following through. Anything that goes into your story has to come to a satisfying conclusion. It’s here that most authors fail, whether they’re just starting out or they are multi-book veterans. This...

One day I woke up and I was sick of being sick. And that one moment changed everything. Some of what I am going to tell you here will be like telling the ancient people that the world was actually round and not flat. Just come along for a little while and listen. ...

I’ve loved John Truby’s “Anatomy of a Story” ever since I first read it. It’s filled with insights I’ve never seen in about a 100 other books on the subject. However, I’ve come to realize that one of the most important...

One of the writers in my long term writing group sent out this video of John Cleese on the 5 Steps to getting into a head space where creativity can flourish. I liked it so much that I dug up a longer version of it for you. The whole lecture was 36 minutes and there...